1. Field
The disclosed aspects relate generally to communications between and/or within devices and specifically to methods and systems for improving near field communication (NFC) radio frequency (RF) discovery through monitoring RF activity associated with one or more radio access technologies (RATs).
2. Background
Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Many such cellular telephones are manufactured with ever increasing computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs. Further, such devices are enabling communications using a variety of frequencies and applicable coverage areas, such as cellular communications, wireless local area network (WLAN) communications, NFC, etc.
Generally, NFC is perceived as a “touch to do” technology that allows users to perform tasks just by bringing them together. When deployed in handheld devices, NFC faces a conflict between the desire to be able to interact with tags, reader/writers, and other devices in a simple and intuitive manner, versus the need to avoid excessive impact on the average battery drain. An implementation thus faces a trade-off between responsiveness and power consumption. The more time a device spends looking for other NFC devices, the faster they will connect, but the higher the drain on the battery. As such current designs attempt to define a correct amount of time spent polling and listening to give a good user experience without adding significantly to the average standby current. In order for a device to make the best compromise in a given situation, it is beneficial if it is made aware of the probability of finding another NFC device.
Thus, improved apparatuses and methods for managing the polling & listening times based on other detected RF activity may be desired.